Gray Wolves

Your editorial of Feb. 18 exposes yet another wrong, this time by the Alaska Board of Game pressing for the shooting of gray wolves, using the airplane as an expedient, so that hunters have more moose and caribou to kill. The wolf, as a predator, is not a menace to the herd, but a benefactor in maintaining its health by removing the lame, the sick, the diseased. Nature`s way. To decimate a species as native to the history and character of Alaska, only to gratify the hunting element, probes the depth of emptiness in thinking.

After reversing President George W. Bush on a pack of environmental rules, the Obama administration let one of Bush's last-minute rules changes stand Friday: removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list in the upper Midwest, Idaho and Montana. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the decision at a press conference, saying the finding by the Fish and Wildlife Service under Bush was "a supportable one. ... Scientists have concluded that recovery has occurred." He also agreed with the Bush administration's decision to keep the wolf on the list in Wyoming, calling that state's wolf recovery plan insufficient.

The state of Alaska received a well-deserved black eye last year after officials unveiled a plan to track and kill hundreds of gray wolves from airplanes. The purpose behind this idiotic proposal was to increase big game populations for hunters. Alaskan wolves are natural predators of moose and caribou -- species that are in no danger of extinction. The Alaska Board of Game wisely backed off the plan a few weeks ago, after a national outcry from environmentalists. But board members haven`t given up. Now they want to allow hunters to go after wolves in a plane, land and then shoot them.

Judge scolds prosecution A behind-the-scenes move by prosecutors - sending an ailing potential witness home to Alaska - has angered a federal judge and given Sen. Ted Stevens an opening to renew allegations that the government isn't playing fair in his corruption case. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected the defense's bid Monday to pull the plug on Stevens' trial and throw out charges accusing the Alaska lawmaker of accepting more than $250,000 in unreported home renovations. But the judge scolded prosecutors for "unilaterally" deciding to put the project's manager, Robert Williams, on a return flight home instead of putting him on the witness stand.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- A long time ago, before the government set out to fix things, the eerie howl of the Northern Rocky Mountain timber wolf once mixed with the roars of grizzly bears, the trumpeting of elk and the grunting of buffalo here. Now these wolves are believed extinct and the guardians of America`s largest park want to replace them with their cousins from the Midwest, the gray timber wolves of Minnesota. Park officials want to reintroduce wolf packs to solve problems created by a massive overpopulation of elk, buffalo and moose, the result of the decision to remove the canny canine hunters from the park in the first place.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth threw open her garden gates on Tuesday to welcome in 4,000 couples who share with her the increasingly rare achievement of a marriage that has lasted for 50 years. The queen and her husband Prince Philip invited couples from all around the world who married, as they did, in 1947 to a special Golden Wedding garden party at Buckingham Palace. It is one of numerous events planned for this year to mark the royal wedding anniversary in November. Famed reggae star launches U.S. tour He is the world's most popular living reggae artist, and he's not even from Jamaica.

The Turk who shot Pope John Paul II refused to answer questions about the attack in court Tuesday, proclaiming again "I am Christ" and jeopardizing the case against him and seven co-defendants in the 1981 assassination plot. Mehmet Ali Agca, 27, enunciated his words slowly in Italian as he sat before the microphone on the witness stand and made hand gestures in an apparent imitation of the pope. "I am Jesus Christ reincarnated. In this generation, the world will be destroyed. The years of human civilization are numbered," Agca said, repeating the declaration which rocked the court during Monday`s opening session.

After reversing President George W. Bush on a pack of environmental rules, the Obama administration let one of Bush's last-minute rules changes stand Friday: removal of the gray wolf from the endangered species list in the upper Midwest, Idaho and Montana. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the decision at a press conference, saying the finding by the Fish and Wildlife Service under Bush was "a supportable one. ... Scientists have concluded that recovery has occurred." He also agreed with the Bush administration's decision to keep the wolf on the list in Wyoming, calling that state's wolf recovery plan insufficient.

Judge scolds prosecution A behind-the-scenes move by prosecutors - sending an ailing potential witness home to Alaska - has angered a federal judge and given Sen. Ted Stevens an opening to renew allegations that the government isn't playing fair in his corruption case. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected the defense's bid Monday to pull the plug on Stevens' trial and throw out charges accusing the Alaska lawmaker of accepting more than $250,000 in unreported home renovations. But the judge scolded prosecutors for "unilaterally" deciding to put the project's manager, Robert Williams, on a return flight home instead of putting him on the witness stand.

There's a wolf on the loose in Fort Lauderdale. The animal's owner, Jeffrey O'Connell, said there's a little Alaskan malamute mixed in, but his pet is almost all gray wolf. The animal escaped from his Sailboat Bend home on Jan. 3. O'Connell posted fliers, took out a newspaper ad and has been making daily checks with animal control, but he's found no trace of the wolf, which he received as a gift from a Navaho Indian seven years ago when he was living in the hills above Boulder, Colo. O'Connell said the wolf has the ability to get out whenever it wants.

Conservationists are right. It's not wise to declare "open season" on gray wolf populations in the Northern Rockies. The re-emergence of the wolf packs is another remarkable wildlife species comeback story. Anyone who's been out to Yellowstone National Park, and seen the wolves from a distance, can tell you that. Now, though, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho are planning hunting seasons in the wake of the wolves' delisting from federal endangered species status. Those states have not set limits on the number of wolves that can be killed.

The wolves were at our door -- almost literally. They killed a big bull elk on the steps of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel dining room the night before we arrived. Now, as we crunched across the frozen parking lot in the predawn darkness, we could hear their not-so-distant howls. Afraid? Enthralled was more like it. This is what we'd come for.

The Gold Coast Heat 10-under basketball team won its 20th consecutive game and fourth consecutive tournament this past weekend in Lakeland at the State YBOA Championships. The Heat defeated the Orlando Wizards in the finals 46-31 in its closest game this year and is preparing to defend its YBOA national title in Lakeland in July and at the AAU National Championships in Orlando in August. The team is coached by Jeff Morford and Abby Ward of South Broward High School. "The boys not only are excellent basketball players, but they are also great kids," Morford said.

There's a wolf on the loose in Fort Lauderdale. The animal's owner, Jeffrey O'Connell, said there's a little Alaskan malamute mixed in, but his pet is almost all gray wolf. The animal escaped from his Sailboat Bend home on Jan. 3. O'Connell posted fliers, took out a newspaper ad and has been making daily checks with animal control, but he's found no trace of the wolf, which he received as a gift from a Navaho Indian seven years ago when he was living in the hills above Boulder, Colo. O'Connell said the wolf has the ability to get out whenever it wants.

The federal government is preparing to announce that the gray wolf -- once nearly shot, trapped and poisoned out of existence in the lower 48 states -- is abundant enough in a few places that it no longer needs the protection afforded the country's most endangered species. The Fish and Wildlife Service plans this month to propose dropping the wolf a notch under the Endangered Species Act, from endangered to threatened, in all but a small part of its range. The change would mean that, in most areas, wolves that kill livestock or otherwise pose a threat to humans could be chased away or shot by government agents.

At the beginning of this century, the Mexican gray wolf was considered a nuisance and a threat to the quest of new settlers to transform barren tracts of land into what is now one of the most renowned cattle production regions of the country. With the blessing of the federal government, ranchers virtually wiped out the species, paying bounties of up to $50 apiece. Today, the tables have turned. A reward of $50,000 is being offered for information leading to the capture of whoever was responsible for the recent shooting deaths of four Mexican wolves, part of a controversial federal program to re-establish the species in the Southwest after a 50-year absence.

The wolves were at our door -- almost literally. They killed a big bull elk on the steps of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel dining room the night before we arrived. Now, as we crunched across the frozen parking lot in the predawn darkness, we could hear their not-so-distant howls. Afraid? Enthralled was more like it. This is what we'd come for.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth threw open her garden gates on Tuesday to welcome in 4,000 couples who share with her the increasingly rare achievement of a marriage that has lasted for 50 years. The queen and her husband Prince Philip invited couples from all around the world who married, as they did, in 1947 to a special Golden Wedding garden party at Buckingham Palace. It is one of numerous events planned for this year to mark the royal wedding anniversary in November. Famed reggae star launches U.S. tour He is the world's most popular living reggae artist, and he's not even from Jamaica.

Your editorial of Feb. 18 exposes yet another wrong, this time by the Alaska Board of Game pressing for the shooting of gray wolves, using the airplane as an expedient, so that hunters have more moose and caribou to kill. The wolf, as a predator, is not a menace to the herd, but a benefactor in maintaining its health by removing the lame, the sick, the diseased. Nature`s way. To decimate a species as native to the history and character of Alaska, only to gratify the hunting element, probes the depth of emptiness in thinking.